Bangladesh recovers from blackout after 24 hours

Dhaka: Lights came back on in most of Bangladesh on Sunday after a near 24-hour blackout that brought much of the country to a standstill.

"The production of electricity is hovering around 5,000 megawatts, meaning now we are able to feed almost all the demand," said Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, an adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, responsible for power, energy and mineral resources.

"The relay system failed due to massive disruption and that caused a country-wide blackout," he said.

The outage on Saturday forced hospitals and garment factories to rely on back-up generators and even plunged the prime minister`s official residence into darkness.

Tawfiq said a committee had been formed to look into the incident and was asked to submit a report along with recommendations on how to prevent any future outages by Tuesday.

Electricity imports from India had resumed, he added.

Tawfiq said it was to early to assess the impact of the blackout on the economy.